Welcome to the Doom and Gloom patrol, Yusuke
by Irken Invader
Summary: Even the fazeable Rube seemed slightly worried now. "This isn't possible. He doesn't have a post-it!" "So, what's that mean?" Yusuke asked. "It means you were right, kid. you're not supposed to be dead." *enter Botan stage right!*


if you've never seen dead like me, maybe you should. not sure whether i'll get around to explaining the system. but if i do, its next chapter. would really help ur understanding of the fic if u've seen/read both. umm......will update whenever. this is one-of-those-things i'll tell you straight off the bat i will never finish. have at least 2 chapters vaguely mapped out after this, after that.....who knows? enjoy anyway, and dont hate me, i 3 reviews. forgive OOC-ness. i try to be careful. ooohhh yeah. cant believe i forgot to say this. don't own either. but then again, do i really need to? i think its rather obvious i dont.

George, short for the hated name of Georgia, was not a happy camper. She had a reap to get to, and she would never hear the end of it if she was late. Missing an appointment wasn't something she made a point of doing, not since her early days on the job, and she had seen the consequences of doing so. She was still the newbie of the team, but the years had gone by, and even if she still didn't like it, she had pretty come to accept that screwing with the system was _not _an option.

Glancing at her wristwatch again, she sighed as she watched the cars race past from her spot at the street corner. Maybe she could just run for it, dash her way in-between the cars. Even if she _was_ hit, it's not like it would kill her. She snorted. After all, she's _already_ dead. But it would delay her further, all the same. Better to just wait it out. She glanced around her surroundings, taking in all the same details, and imagining all the things that could go wrong. It had become a morbid habit of hers, but it was still a skill every good reaper needed to master if they wanted to do their job effectively. Let's see, it's a busy intersection, after all. Any small number of distractions could cause an unintentional death. There was a woman chatting on her cell phone. People like that tended to miss the light changes. Maybe she'd walk out in front of a car without noticing. A student wearing the local junior high school uniform was making a little boy holding a soccer ball laugh by making funny faces. 'Shouldn't that kid be in class? Tch. The little delinquent's probably cutting. And where is that little boy's mother? The whole situation is just _asking_ for trouble.' Another man was smoking a cigarette while reading the local newspaper. Perhaps some falling ash, or a spark would set the paper alight? Or maybe his clothes? Fire spread fast. George sighed again, and glanced down at her post-it. 'Y. Togashi, Post Office, ETD 12:56 p.m.' That was about still about 8 blocks away. 'I got about 20 minutes to get there. Should be plenty of time, but I still need to find the damn person, and there's no telling how long that will take.' It was about as she was thinking this that it happened.

That idiotic little boy kicked his ball into the street, and ran after it. _Right into the path of an oncoming car_. "Shit!" George growled, and made to run out there and grab the kid herself, before reluctantly pulling back, and taking a deep breathe. 'This has got to be someone else's reap, George.' She mentally scolded herself. 'Remember. The number one rule is _don't interfere_.' Then she was rudely shoved as the junior high kid from before pushed past her and dove in front of the car, pushing the little boy out of the way. You would think that day after day, year after year without end, of watching much worse than this, hell, experiencing much worse than this, (She had gone down on her fair share of planes, been caught up in the blast of a few bombs, and been stabbed more times than she cared to count) would have prepared her for it, and dulled her to it, and it did. But she still cringed just a little bit at the thump. It was pretty loud.

George looked curiously around. She hadn't spotted another reaper around. _She_ wasn't here for him, that was for sure. Sure, she didn't know the kid's name, but he wasn't her time, and he wasn't her place, and as stupid as the post-its may be, they had never been wrong. But she hadn't seen anyone give him that gentle brush, tap, handshake, that _touch_ needed to free his soul. There was his very obviously dead body, with that spectral body very obviously absent. She glanced down worriedly to the body again. He wasn't still…_in there_…was he? "Ahhh, goddammit!" So someone was late to their appointment after all, and now she was going to be too, because she needed to take care of this. Everyone else up to this point was still frozen in shock, so George was the first to run out to the body, and give that brush to free his soul under the pretense of checking for a pulse that she knew wasn't there. Too late she remembered that reaps were non-transferable.

Yusuke woke up, and clutched his head, groaning. "Ow ow ow!" He opened his eyes, and met those of a girl, older than him. Her eyes widened in shock, and she dropped his wrist, which he only now noticed she had been holding. He saw that the two of them were surrounded by a ring of spectators, all of them looking worried. The girl turned back to face them, and shook her head. The men only looked grim, the women gasping and looking away. Then she turned back towards Yusuke, grabbed him by the wrist again and yanked him hard, up and away through the crowd. And as he was dragged away, he couldn't help but look back and notice himself lying bloody on the ground.

"Hey, hey, hey! What's going on? Is that really _me_ back there? How can that be me if _I'm_ me? All I can remember is…hey! That little boy! Is he o.k? He was about to be hit by that car and then…holy shit! Am I dead?" "You catch on fast." The girl replied grimly, not lessening her hold on his wrist, and not slowing down in the slightest. "But what's going on?" "That's what I'd like to know." Yusuke planted his feet firmly on the ground and tugged. The girl tripped a bit, but caught herself, and still managed to hold onto his wrist. She glared at him. "Look, we're going to get this sorted out. What happened back there," Here she pointed firmly back in the direction of the crowd and his body, where he could hear an ambulance's siren approaching. "Was not supposed to happen! I can't even begin to explain how wrong this is! I don't know how to fix this, but I know someone who does. But I can't take you to him until I take care of _my_ business, so you're just gonna have to stick around until then." He could probably get away from this insane woman if he tried hard enough, but she looked pretty pissed. If he knew anything, if was that pissed off chicks could really pack a whollop, (Just look at Keiko) and he didn't want to be the outlet for her frustration. Besides, he'd never been dead before. This was unfamiliar territory, and this girl seemed to know her way around it. So he let her resume pulling.

"At least tell me where you're taking me." "I told you! I have to get to the post office before 12:56!" She yelled, waving a yellow post-it wildly around. _Now_ he was pissed off. "The post office? The fricking _post office_? I'm not supposed to be dead, and mailing a damn letter is more important to you than fixing that?" Another glare was sent his way. "I never said you weren't supposed to die. All I said was that something went wrong. And I'm _not_ going to mail a letter, dumbass. I need to pick up another soul, to make sure what happened to you doesn't happen twice. Hopefully, I won't have to cart this guy around for as long as I get the feeling I'm going to be stuck with you." She paused thoughtfully. "Or girl. It could be a girl." It was a lot of information to take in, so Yusuke decided to focus on only a part of it. "You mean you don't know whether this doomed guy _is_ a guy or not?" "All I know is what's on the post-it." He peered over her shoulder. "That's not much to go on. What's ETD?" "Estimated time of death." "Only estimated?" "Well, it's never been wrong before." "You said mine went wrong." "I don't have your post-it. Now we're here, so shut up and help me find this guy. No one will be able to see you, so do me a favor and listen around, or look for name tags or I.D's. Shout if you find him." Sounded interesting.

Yoshihiro Togashi entered the Post Office, and made his way up to the main desk. "Ummm…I got a call that you had a package for me?" "Name please." Togashi glanced uncomfortably over at the girl who was browsing the stamps. He couldn't shake the feeling she was listening in. "It's…Yoshihiro Togashi." "Oh, yes. We do have something under that name. It appears it got lost in the sending and has been floating around the dead letters section for some time now. We do hope this has caused no inconvenience, and ask that you make sure all packages and envelopes are correctly addressed in the future. If you would just fill out these forms, ." The clerk passed him several forms and a pencil, accidentally dropping one on the floor in the process, before retreating into the back room to retrieve his package. The girl from the stamps past by, patting him on the shoulder once, remarking "Tough luck. I've had it happened to me once or twice. Both times I was _receiving _the stuff too, so it's not like it was _my_ fault it was mislabeled." She threw a lazy middle finger in the direction the clerk had gone, grinned, and walked out the door. Guess she had been listening in after all. Frowning at a mistake he had made as his mind momentarily drifted from his task, the man flipped the pencil around and began to erase. At that moment the clerk came back through the door, and accidently slipped on the pencil that had fallen to the floor. The heavy package flew from her hands, and landed on the unfortunate man's head, sending it straight down onto the impeccably sharp pencil's point.

"I never liked post offices." The man muttered, as he watched the clerk scream at the blood dripping onto the counter from the hole in what used to be his head. "Not many people do." George commented back. She nodded her head in the direction of swirling blue and white lights just outside the door. "Bet there aren't any where you're going, so I wouldn't worry about it. Enjoy yourself, and if you see Betty up there, make sure you tell her we all say hi." She barred her arm across Yusuke's chest, just in case he got any funny ideas. He didn't seem like the kind ready to go, but when you saw those lights…it was a little hard to remind yourself that they weren't there for you. Betty couldn't remember that.

Yusuke whistled long and loud. "They always that gruesome?" George snorted. "You think that was gruesome? That's probably the cleanest death I've had all week." Yusuke jogged to catch up with her rapidly retreating back. "Don't people, you know, die in their sleep 'n junk?" The girl actually paused to wait for him to catch up. "I'm in External Influences division. We _only_ get the gruesome stuff. Accidents, suicides, homicides, etc." "We? You mean, there's a bunch of you?" "No shit, Sherlock. You think little old me is gonna be collecting Old Mother Hubbard is Merry Old England at the same frickin time as Joe Smoe becomes a bloody smear on someone's wall in Mexico?" At least the kid had the decency to look slightly embarrassed, thought George. Only slightly. The rest of him looked like he was gonna knock her clock off. "Yeah, yeah, I get it. You're the big bad delinquent who beats the living daylights outta anyone who pisses him off. Well, guess what? So was I. You are looking at a college dropout, kid. Now I work at a temp agency collating paper, while trying to find the best detergent for getting brains out of my favorite tee. Ah ah ah!!!" She commented, wagging her finger in his face, and shutting his mouth. "Don't even ask. Look, we're here. Ready to meet the rest of the doom and gloom patrol?" Yusuke stared at the building the apparent grim reaper/college dropout/paper collator had stopped outside of. Der Waffle Haus. She walked in, with the first smile he had seen on her face, waving to a black waitress "Hey, Kiffany" before heading over to a table that was already quite occupied with the strangest assortment of people who looked to be waiting for her. She turned, and that cute smile disappeared when she noticed he hadn't entered after her. She stomped her foot, and pointed at a grim faced man older man sitting at the table, who was unmistakably glaring at him. He shrugged. 'Well, I died today. I don't plan on staying dead, but I might as well enjoy myself while I'm still technically invincible." Then he stepped through the door.


End file.
